These words are fractals, simultaneously simple and complex. It’s alarming that we’re unable, as a matter of discourse, to accept this useful ambiguity anymore.
At its simplest, a woman is a person who identifies as such. At among its most complex, it’s an empowered expression of femininity. That there isn’t a single definition doesn’t make the word bad, it makes it human.
This is circular an so, not a deninition. Not a problem as long as this is part of an internal personal model. It is a problem when reasoning about social structures.
It’s Cartesian, not circular. There’s a difference. We don’t need it rigorously defined for it to have meaning—that’s the point. (This does make it a word incompatible with precise endeavours like lawmaking.)
You did not define, rigorously or otherwise. As to needs, when we turn to conversations on how to structure a society, subjective meaning is not sufficent - definitions are required.
> subjective meaning is not sufficent - definitions are required
This is the flaw. It isn’t. It is required if we will write rules with respect to it. But there is another way. Forcing everything into an objective definition is the source of our divides, not a solution to anything.
Statesmen, from Cicero to Hamilton to Obama, understood this. But there is an emerging tendency to treat every system as technical, and that is destructive.
Just came back from my son's Judo competition. The children are paired by age and weight - girls separately from the boys. What is your take on this arrangement?
> girls separately from the boys. What is your take on this arrangement?
That it’s irrelevant to the definition of a woman. That’s the strength of fuzzy definitions.
When separating the kids, did anyone formally define what a girl or a boy is? Did every parent in that room need to resolve every edge case to their implied definitions ex ante? Could you guarantee conflict by forcing a formal definition on that group, even if it results in the same practical outcome the implied, unsaid definition yielded and which was peacefully accepted by the group? No, no and, of course, yes.
Please stop calling "a woman is a person who identifies as such" a fuzzy definition. It is to definition what "alternative fact" is to a fact.
Now, you are right that for the purposes of this event no one defined what a girl or a boy is. The reason it is so (as is the case with many other social conventions) is because neither the participants nor the organizers challenge the classification.
There is no doubt that had it been challenged strongly and frequently enough, the implicit definitions would become explicit and formal.
> stop calling "a woman is a person who identifies as such" a fuzzy definition
I didn’t. I called it a simple definition. It’s not generally correct because it’s too precise.
> had it been challenged strongly and frequently enough, the implicit definitions would become explicit and formal
For people without any civics background, yes. That we lack leaders who push back against overspecification, or people raising needless challenges out of, I don’t know, maladjustment, is a cultural failure, collectively, and an individual failing among those who don’t understand nuance.
But I'm OK with this. One of the original people demanding "define a woman" was a law maker. If we're making laws that use the word woman we need to have a stringent definition.
> One of the original people demanding “define a woman” was a law maker. If we’re making laws that use the word woman we need to have a stringent definition.
We don’t (and, contrary to a sibling comment, this is not particular to common law, it applies in civil law jurisdictions as well, though it may be more true in the common law). If every word in law needed a “stringent definition”, the law would be so full of definitions you’d never be able to find the rules that actually apply them to the real world. Laws sometimes need stringent definitions, and they sometimes need disambiguation between plausible alternatives that don’t actually require a stringent definition, and sometimes they get by just fine with no definition at all.
> we're making laws that use the word woman we need to have a stringent definition
Not ex ante. That’s the strength of common law. If you have a problem with this, consider why we need laws which define womanhood. (Yes, I am an ERA proponent.)
> The fact that 1 in a million people is neither a man or a women
the number you are looking for here (ie only ..
conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female
) is 180 in a million, or some 4,625 or so in a country such as Australia - which does have some real bearing on things such as national passports and why Australia has a three value gender field there ( M | F | X ).
Less strictly, the prevalence of "nondimorphic sexual development" might be as high as 1.7% or 17,000 in a million.
Like a “race”, a “gender” is a social grouping of either identity or ascribed membership that is distinguished by being viewed as being exclusive with (though, in some models, admitting mixtures as their own unique possibilities), others in the same named group.
> By that definition, isn’t “emo” — or literally any other social category — a gender
No, “emo” is a social category that is not exclusive with genders, its in a different bucket.
But, yes, the distinction of social categories into groups like “gender”, “race”, etc., is, like the categories themselves, fundamentally an arbitrary social construct.
> Do you believe that segregated services — sports, bathrooms, locker rooms, etc — were intended to be segregated by gender, as opposed to sex?
Binary “sex” is just ascribed gender on the basis of a subset of sex traits. To the extent there is a valid basis for segregating services, it varies from service to service. Similarly, the motivations vary from service to service (and, generally differ from the legitimate justifications, if any.)
The previous definition was Adult Human Female, dropping the adult is weird because you wouldn't consider an 11 year old experiencing their menarche to be a woman right? I think the tropey phrase would be "becoming a woman".
But okay you would like to define a woman as a human female, "an organism that in sexual maturity produces ova (large gametes (reproductive cells))", if a prepubescent takes hormone blockers for their entire life does that interrupt your definition of woman? What about if an XY Swyer Syndrone individual has a functional uterus and ovaries? What if a female with hypogonadism takes hormone therapy to prevent infertility?
Well, the word "woman" can mean both "human adult female" and "human female", but I think anyone accepting one of these definitions would accept both, so that's not controversial IMO.
Probably we should look at potential over one's life, likely at (or even before) birth, otherwise the same could be argued for "what if a child dies before they're fertile"?
